Cousin John Richard wuz partly a layin’ down on a bamboo couch with a lot of pillows to his back—he had had a dretful backache for a day or two. But he wuz a lookin’ some more comfortable than he had, and not quite so wan, but he wuz still fur wanner than I loved to see him. I myself wuz a knittin’ and occasionally a liftin’ my eyes to look over the path that led to the village, for my companion had walked down there to get a pair of new suspenders.
I knew it wuzn’t time for him to get back yet; but such is woman’s love, I kep’ watch of the track on which I expected to see the beloved form approachin’ bimeby.
That man is almost my idol.
It hain’t right to worship a human creeter I know; and then agin, sometimes, when I would meditate on the wickedness of my bein’ so completely wrapped up in him, I have tried to exonerate myself by this thought:
The children of Israel wuz commanded not to worship anything that wuz like anything else in heaven or on earth. And I have sometimes felt that I would get clear on that head if I knelt to him every day and burned incense under him, and made a perfect Dagon of him.
For my dear companion is truly onlike anything I ever see or hearn on; his demeaners is different, and his acts and his talk under excitement. And his linement looks fur different from any other folks’es linements.
But I am a digressin’, and to resoom.
We sot there as happy as a nest full of turkle doves, when all of a sudden the girl come up with a card on a little silver server, and handed it to Maggie as if it wuz a cracker or a cup of tea, and Maggie took it and read out:
“Colonel Seybert.”
And Thomas J. spoke up and told the girl to ask the Colonel out there where we wuz; and so she did, and sot him a chair by Thomas J., out amongst the rose-vines.